


Teen Wolf Season One

by ash_mcj



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Beacon Hills (Teen Wolf), Beacon Hills High School, Beacon Hills Lacrosse Team, Bisexual Stiles Stilinski, Canon Rewrite, Falling In Love, Finstock Coven Practices Witchcraft, Fluff and Angst, High School, Mage Bobby Finstock, Magic, Multi, Scisaac - Freeform, Twin Stiles Stilinski, Vampire Stiles Stilinski, Vampires, Werewolf Mates, Werewolf Stiles Stilinski, Werewolves, Witches, sterek, stethan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-21
Updated: 2020-10-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:08:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26576545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ash_mcj/pseuds/ash_mcj
Summary: Stiles Stilinski and his twin sister Ashton are thrown into the supernatural world when their best friend Scott McCall is bitten by a werewolf. In hopes of helping him, they accidentally stumble upon some old secrets of their late mother's life and realize they were always meant to be affiliated with the supernatural. As the three of them team up with Derek Hale and Brynlee Finstock--their coach's daughter who reveals some family secrets about the Finstocks and the mysterious Greenberg--to hunt down the murderous alpha, they find themselves forming a makeshift pack. As if the stress of a rampaging monster in their small town wasn't enough to deal with, Scott falls in love with a hunter, Ashton finds herself getting close to a secretive classmate named Isaac Lahey, and Stiles is looking at boys in a way he really isn't sure how to deal with. Well...one boy, anyway.Main Pairings for Season 1: Scott/Allison (Scallison), Stiles/Derek (Sterek), Ashton/Isaac (Isashton lmao), and Lydia/Jackson (Jydia)
Relationships: Alan Deaton/Bobby Finstock, Allison Argent/Isaac Lahey, Allison Argent/Scott McCall, Ashton Stilinski/Isaac Lahey, Derek Hale/Stiles Stilinski, Ethan/Jackson Whittemore, Ethan/Stiles Stilinski, Isaac Lahey/Scott McCall, Lydia Martin/Jackson Whittemore, Lydia Martin/Jordan Parrish, Scott McCall/Kira Yukimura
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	1. body in the woods

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry if it starts a little slow--it will pick up. I will update every Wednesday!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A dead body is found in the Beacon Hills Preserve and Scott is attacked by an animal.

It was nearing midnight as two teenagers crept quietly across the front lawn of 821 Williamson Road. Judging by the dark windows and the only sound being those of the crickets, it seemed like an average night in Beacon Hills--but that was only because most of their small town hadn't heard the news yet.

Stiles Stilinski looked up at the edge of the McCalls' roof that was a just few feet out of reach and whispered, "Ashton, give me a boost."

"Are you serious?"

"No, I'm Stiles. Kinda offended that you screwed that one up,” He deadpanned, before turning to her and repeating, "C'mon, boost me up! We don't have time for this."

Ashton rolled her eyes as she got down into a squatting position and linked her hands together to support Stiles' foot. "You know, most guys would give the girl a boost."

"You're not _a_ _girl_ \--you're my sister." Stiles waved her off dismissively. He slid his shoe into her linked fingers and she tightened her grip to steady him. "Plus, you're first line in lacrosse--you probably have more muscles than me, anyway."

"That means I'm more skilled than you, not stronger," She groaned as Stiles stepped up. She straightened her legs, hoisting him up so he could grab onto the edge of the roof. She continued pushing upwards as he crawled onto the roof, until his weight was finally off of her hands. He turned back around and braced himself before putting his arm down to help her up. She jumped up and grabbed hold of his forearm, earning a grunt from him as he suddenly held all of her body weight.

"Hurry up!" He hissed.

"I'm trying!"

Ashton did a one-armed pull up and used her other hand to reach out and grab onto the edge. Now that the weight was being distributed, Stiles was able to grasp her upper arm and help pull her up onto the roof with him.

"You're a _thousand_ pounds," Stiles complained, as he laid down to catch his breath after the exertion. "No more chips from the vending machine at school. I'm cutting you off."

"I hate you,” She said, laying beside him and staring up at the dark sky. "Why did we even go this way? We could have gone in through the front door--we have a copy of the house key."

"I couldn't remember if his mom was supposed to be working tonight and we couldn't just sneak into their house in the middle of the night if she's here. Or she could have seen us, and she never would've let Scott come out at this time."

They heard the front door creak open underneath them and looked at each other in alarm.

"Think that's Scott or Mrs. McCall?" Ashton wondered.

Stiles shook his head and rolled over so he could quietly crawl to the edge of the roof to peer over. All of a sudden, his hand slipped and he yelped as his torso slid off. Ashton quickly grabbed onto his calves to keep him from falling off completely, leaving him flailing around upside down in front of Scott, who raised a baseball bat instinctively in defense.

The two boys screamed loudly for a few seconds, until Scott realized who was trying to break into his house so late and yelled, "Stiles, what the hell are you doing?!"

"You weren't answering your phone!" Stiles explained with the higher-pitch in his voice that he always used when he was caught doing something he probably shouldn't have been doing. "Why do you have a bat?"

"I thought you were a predator," Scott told him as he lowered the weapon.

"A preda--I--what?" Stiles sputtered.

"Did you hit him?" Ashton asked, leaning over a little to be able to see their best friend standing on the porch.

"Ash?"

"Hey, Scott, how's your night going?"

"Look, I know it's late, but you've gotta hear this," Stiles interrupted, looking at Scott excitedly. "We saw our dad leave twenty minutes ago. Dispatch called--they're bringing in every officer from the Beacon department and even _State Police_."

"For what?"

"Two joggers found a body in the woods."

Stiles twisted to be able to get back onto the roof and slide off onto the grass feet-first, instead of head-first, and Ashton followed suit.

"A _dead_ body?" Scott asked, confused. Things like this never happened in their town, so he really hadn't expected his night to go this way.

"No, a body of water. Yes, dumb-ass, a dead body!"

"You mean like murdered?"

"Nobody knows yet. Just that it was a girl--probably in her twenties,” Stiles shrugged.

"Hold on, if they found the body, then what are they looking for?"

"That's the best part..." Stiles said, grinning wildly.

"They only found _half_!" Ashton revealed, earning a glare from her brother.

"I was obviously about to say it--why did you cut me off like that?"

"We're going,” Ashton said with an air of finality that left no room for argument.

* * *

The three teenagers were already trying to hop out of the robin egg blue jeep before it was even parked in front of the _Beacon Hills Preserve (No Entry After Dark)_ sign, which they fully intended to ignore. As soon as the engine was off, they were running into the dense woods.

"We're seriously doing this?" Scott asked hesitantly.

"You're the one always bitching that nothing ever happens in this town," Stiles accused.

"I was trying to get a good night's sleep in before practice tomorrow."

"Right, because sitting on the bench is such grueling effort,” Stiles snorted, obviously not seeing the big deal.

"No, because...I'm playing this year. In fact, I'm making first line."

"Hey! That's the spirit. Everyone should have a dream,” Stiles laughed, putting his hand on Scott's shoulder encouragingly. "Even a pathetically unrealistic one."

"He's got more of a chance than you, Stiles," Ashton defended him.

"Thank you," Scott told her. "This is why I married _you_ when we were seven, instead of Stiles."

"Don't flatter her--you know we just didn't have a dress that would look right with my eyes."

"We have the same eyes, dipshit," Ashton said, raising a thin brown eyebrow at him.

"Exactly. That's why I knew the dress looked terrible with my eyes. Thanks for taking the embarrassment for that one."

"Just out of curiosity, which half of the body are we looking for?" Scott asked, moving their attention back to their current adventure.

"Huh...I didn't even think about that," Stiles said, slowing down to look at them contemplatively. 

"And, uh...what if whoever killed the body is still out here?"

"Also something I didn't think about," Stiles admitted, before shaking his head and continuing on into the preserve.

They began climbing a steep dirt hill and Scott had to lean against a tree trunk as he tried to catch his breath, which had become labored over the past few minutes.

"It's comforting to know you've...planned this out...with your usual attention to detail," Scott managed to get out.

"I know," Stiles laughed, stopping at the top of the hill beside Ashton to wait for Scott.

"Maybe the...severe asthmatic...should be the one holding the flashlight, huh?" Scott said, taking his inhaler from the pocket of his red sweatshirt and shaking it as he continued slowly up the hill.

Once Scott reached them, they heard the alarming sound of dogs barking ahead. Ashton grabbed the flashlight from Stiles as he tried to shine it at the search party and turned it off, before pulling the boys down to the ground with her to hide.

"Why would you shine the light _at_ them? You _want_ them to see us?" She hissed, hitting Stiles lightly in the shoulder with the flashlight.

"Wait, come on!" Stiles whispered, scrambling to his feet and running towards the policeman.

"No, you stupid-- _ugh,”_ Ashton groaned, following after him. If he was getting caught, everyone would know she was with him, too. There was no point in letting him be stupid on his own.

"Stiles! Ashton!" Scott called out softly, watching them creep through the trees. He put his inhaler to his lips and took a long puff, before pushing himself up and chasing after them. "Wait up, guys!"

Suddenly, a policeman appeared directly in front of Stiles, shining a bright flashlight in his face as his police dog began barking threateningly at him. Stiles screamed and fell backwards onto the ground, knocking into his sister on the way down. He and Ashton crawled backwards frantically, trying to get away from the dog that was nearly nipping at their ankles.

"Hold it right there!" The policeman boomed, making the twins flinch and cling onto each other as the dog continued barking and growling only a few inches from them.

"Hang on, hang on!" The Beacon Hills Sheriff shouted, much to their horror and relief. They couldn't see him because of the bright light in their eyes, but they heard him approach. "These little delinquents belong to me."

The dog was pulled further away from them and Stiles and Ashton got to their feet as the flashlight was turned off, giving them back their sight.

"Dad, how are you doing?" Stiles greeted him casually.

"So, do you, uh...listen into all of my phone calls?" Noah asked.

"No," Stiles told him. "Not the boring ones."

"Where's your guys' usual partner in crime?"

"Who, Scott? Sc-Scott's home. He said he wanted to get a good night's sleep for his first day back at school tomorrow."

"He's trying to make first line this year in lacrosse, so...he's gotta rest up before the first day of practice," Ashton added.

"It's just us...in the woods...by ourselves," Stiles assured their father.

Noah didn't seem convinced, as he shined his flashlight around the nearby trees and shouted, "Scott, you out there? Scott?"

"We're alone, Dad, you can stop yelling at the trees," Ashton told him, praying that Scott would stay concealed by one of the trees he was doubtlessly hiding behind.

It seemed luck was on their side, as Noah finally sighed and looked down at the ground. "Well, I'm going to walk you guys back to your car and we are going to have a conversation about something called 'invasion of privacy'.”

"I don't know if that's--" Ashton started, but stopped when their dad grabbed the back of both of their necks and led them away from the search party.

"You guys cannot listen in on _any_ of my calls--especially ones involving work. Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?"

"We were trying to help," Stiles said.

"No, you were bored and were listening in to see if anything peaked your interest."

"Are you saying that it _wouldn't_ have helped if we'd found the body?" Ashton reasoned.

"Did you?" Noah challenged, knowing damn well they hadn't. They didn't even need to answer. "Then it doesn't matter. Whatever happened to that girl--whether it was an animal or a person--could still be nearby. That's why we have weapons and dogs and training."

"We should have brought Scott's bat," Stiles realized.

"Did you guys even think about how much danger you could have gotten into?"

"It would have been three against one," Ashton pointed out, earning a scoff from her father.

"You really think three _unarmed_ fifteen year olds would've been able to take on a murderer or a deranged animal capable of doing what was done to that poor girl? Really?"

The three of them walked in silence for a while, until the jeep came into view.

"How did you know where we parked?" Stiles asked him.

"Father's intuition."

"I feel like your intuition is an invasion of _our_ privacy, because you always seem to know everything about us," Ashton grumbled.

"When you become a parent, you'll get the right to invade your children's privacy by knowing everything about them. Until then, don't listen in on my calls or sneak out of the house after your curfew."

"Hear that, Ash? Looks like you've gotta become a parent."

"You will be grounded until you're thirty, if you have a child before finishing college," Noah told her. "Now, go home and go to bed."

"Night, Dad," Ashton told him, opening the passenger door.

"You guys are forgetting something," Noah told them, holding out his hand expectantly.

"Uh...I love you?" Stiles tried with a smile on his face. When Noah just raised his eyebrow at him, he groaned and pulled his phone out of his pocket. "C'mon, Dad, we're gonna need our phones for school tomorrow--most teachers make us use them for looking things up and stuff. Or what if something happens to the jeep and we have to call someone for a ride?"

"Then you can find a payphone and call me, and I'll come give you guys a ride. I'll even leave quarters on the kitchen table for you to take."

"Payphones? Do those even exist anymore?" Ashton asked, genuinely shocked. "I thought those were like...extinct or whatever."

"Yes, they still exist; and you'll figure out how to use them, if you need to."

"But how will we learn how to use them..." Stiles wondered, trailing off.

"...if we don't have our phones to look it up?" Ashton finished the thought.

"Phones, now. You guys know the repercussion for breaking curfew. You can have them back tomorrow night, if you do the dishes before going to bed," Noah told them, holding his hands out. The teenagers turned the devices off and set them in his hands. "And I love you guys, too."

Stiles got into the jeep and they drove off, their father watching them with his arms crossed over his chest.

"So...we're just leaving Scott in the woods?" Ashton asked after they'd been driving for a few minutes. "What if there _is_ someone dangerous out there?"

"What kind of idiot murderer just hangs out where there is an active search party going on?" Stiles shrugged. "He'll be fine. I mean, what other option do we have? If we go back, Dad will kill us."

"That's true."

* * *

As Scott walked through the woods, he couldn't help but jump at just about every sound. The pulsing of the chirping crickets, the dead leaves crunching under his shoes, and the eerie flapping of unknown winged creatures above his head in the tree branches were setting him on edge.

He walked slowly for about ten minutes, before he got the feeling that something was wrong. He stopped, looking at the dimly lit trees surrounding him and pulled his inhaler out for the second time that night. He put it to his lips and was about to inhale, when a loud rumbling erupted from the darkness ahead of him. Before he could react, a stampede of deer came rushing towards him out of nowhere.

He screamed as he was knocked backwards, his inhaler flying from his hand when he fell to the ground. The deer began leaping over him and he flinched, curling his limbs into his body as the hooves pounded the ground just inches from him. It was over as fast as it came, and Scott was left lying there panting, thanking whatever luck he managed to have that he was still alive without any hoof-shaped holes in his body.

"God,” He breathed, getting shakily to his feet. He took his phone out of his pants pocket and lit up the screen to use as a flashlight to find the inhaler. He walked around, moving the leaves and twigs around with his shoes as he searched, until his light shined on the naked, bloodied torso of a young woman, who was staring up at him with unseeing brown eyes. He shrieked and stumbled away from the body, not noticing that he was nearing a steep hill until he took a step back onto nothing.

Suddenly, he was tumbling down, letting out pained grunts as his body hit the ground repeatedly. He was rolling too quickly to have any chance of bracing himself against the large tree trunk that slammed into the side of his ribs as he descended to the bottom. By the time his world stopped spinning, he was laying on his stomach on level ground, gasping to refill his lungs after the breath was knocked out of him so many times. His airways felt as if they were closing and the aches all over his battered body made him want nothing more than to just lay there for awhile, but he knew he needed to get out of these woods... Just in case the murderer really had decided to hang around.

He used the fallen tree trunk directly in front of him to pull himself up off the ground. He winced as he stood, but tried to put it out of his mind and focus on getting out of there. He hopped over the tree trunk and took a few steps, before hearing a low growl behind him that made his blood run cold and the hairs on the back of his neck stand up in fear. He forced himself to turn around and squinted against the dark, seeing a large black figure with glowing eyes crouched a few yards away.

In a flash, the creature leaped towards Scott and tackled him to the ground. He struggled for a moment, before feeling a sharp pain in his side as the creature sunk its teeth into his skin, eliciting a strangled cry from the teenager. He kicked the animal as hard as he could and it let go, giving him enough time to roll away and scramble to his feet. He took off running faster than he'd ever moved, maneuvering around the trees and avoiding the sticks and tree roots scattered along the floor of the woods that he would usually have tripped on. His body was on autopilot--nothing else mattered in that moment than the need to get to the street, which he knew was close by.

To his relief, he made it safely through the edge of the trees and onto the wet road, where it was raining heavily. He hadn't noticed the downpour as much when he was under the cover of the trees, but it splattered against his face now, cooling his flushed skin. The bright flash of car lights illuminated the road and Scott put his arms out to uselessly brace himself, but the car was able to swerve around him just in time to avoid hitting him.

Scott watched the car drive off and struggled to catch his breath, feeling the adrenaline start ebbing away and making him much more aware of his aching ribs from the fall and the deep throbbing in the side of his abdomen. He lifted his sweatshirt up to inspect the bite mark in the faint glow of the moonlight and looked at it in horror. Several deep puncture wounds forming the upper and lower jaw prints were etched into his tan skin and a few trails of water-diluted blood ran down into his waistband.

The distant sound of a wolf's howl from within the woods startled him and he dropped his sweatshirt back over the bite as he began limping quickly towards his house about a mile and a half away.


	2. bitten by a wolf

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott realizes that he has new abilities after being bitten by the wolf in the woods, and they run into an old face: Derek Hale.

Stiles and Ashton pulled into the school parking lot the next morning to find Scott waiting anxiously in their usual parking spot.

"I told you he'd be fine." Stiles told her as he parked the jeep and got out.

"Why haven't you guys been on the group chat? I've been trying to reach you all night!" Scott said urgently. "Something bit me in the woods after you left!"

"Dad took our phones. What do you mean something bit you?" Ashton asked worriedly, looking him over.

"I mean that a huge animal came up and bit my side last night after you guys were caught by your dad."

"No shit--are you okay?" Stiles asked, eyeing his side intriguingly.

"Yeah, I guess. I think it's stopped bleeding for the most part today."

"Well, let's see this thing." Stiles said, motioning for Scott to lift his shirt.

Scott reached down to carefully pull the hem of his shirt up over the large white bandage covering the side of his abdomen. There were a few small, red blotches where the blood had soaked through, but it wasn't too much.

Stiles whistled impressively and reached out to try to touch the bandage, but Scott flinched away and put his shirt down.

"It was too dark to see much, but I'm pretty sure it was a wolf."

"A wolf bit you?" Stiles asked him disbelievingly.

"Uh-huh."

"No, not a chance."

"I heard a wolf howling." Scott pressed, but Stiles just shook his head.

"No, you didn't."

"What do you mean no I didn't? How do you know what I heard?"

"Because California doesn't have wolves, okay? Not in like sixty years."

"Really?" Scott asked, confusedly.

"Yes, really. There are no wolves in California." Stiles assured him.

"That doesn't mean it definitely wasn't a wolf, Stiles. I mean, howls are kinda distinctive--it would be hard for Scott to have misheard that." Ashton reasoned. "Maybe someone's pet got out or something?"

"Someone's pet _wolf_?" Stiles scoffed.

"People have tigers and shit--why not?"

"People don't have tigers and wolves as pets in Beacon Hills, Ashton."

"Alright, well, if you don't believe me about the wolf...then you're _definitely_ not gonna believe me about when I tell you I found the body." Scott revealed.

"You--are you kidding me?" Stiles laughed, grabbing onto Scott's arm enthusiastically.

"No, man, I wish. I'm gonna have nightmares for a month."

"So...what half was it?" Ashton wondered.

"I found the top half."

"Oh, God. That is freakin' _awesome_. I mean, this is seriously gonna be the best thing that's happened to this town, since--" Stiles seemed to lose his train of thought as a girl with perfectly-curled strawberry blonde hair walked passed them towards the school. "Since the birth of Lydia Martin. Hey, Lydia, you look...like you're gonna ignore me."

Lydia didn't even bother a glance at the skinny kid with a brown buzz cut, who was staring after her longingly.

"Did you think she _wasn't_ going to ignore you, like she does every time you try to talk to her?" Ashton asked, shaking her head at her brother's infatuation with the most popular girl at school.

"You guys are the cause of this, you know." Stiles accused, looking at Scott and Ashton. "Dragging me down to your nerd depths. I'm a nerd by association. I've been scarlet nerded by you people."

"Uh-huh." Scott chuckled, walking towards the front steps of the brick building.

It wasn't too far of a walk, seeing as their first period was the first class on the right as they walked into the school. They saw a cluster of empty seats near the back and Stiles made a beeline to one by the window. Ashton took the seat directly in front of him and Scott sat beside her just as the teacher began speaking.

"Hello, class. My name is Mr. Curtis." He greeted, before grabbing a marker and writing something on the whiteboard at the front of the classroom. "As you all know, there indeed was a body found in the woods last night. And I am sure your eager little minds are coming up with various macabre scenarios as to what happened, but I am here to tell you that the police have a suspect in custody, which means you can give your undivided attention to the syllabus, which is on your desk outlining this semester."

Scott looked over at the twins with furrowed eyebrows, but they seemed just as confused by this information as him, by the way they turned to each other with puzzled expressions.

Seemingly out of the blue, Scott flinched as if he heard a loud noise and glanced around the room wildly. He finally settled his sights out the window at a girl outside, who was ruffling through her backpack while on the phone. He squinted at her, watching as the Vice Principal met with her and they started for the school. A few moments later, they appeared in the doorway of Mr. Curtis' classroom.

"Class, this is our new student, Allison Argent. Please do your best to make her feel welcome." The Vice Principal introduced, then walked out. Allison entered the classroom and made her way to the desk behind Scott. As soon as she sat down, Scott turned around and handed her his pen. She looked at him hesitantly for a second, before taking the pen with a smile.

"Thanks."

Stiles openly stared at the interaction with perplexity blatant on his face, until Ashton nudged him and he looked away. He subtly pointed towards them, but Ashton just shrugged and turned her attention back to her class syllabus.

* * *

"How desperate would you have to be to teach that class, instead of literally _any_ other subject?" Ashton asked, grateful to be out in the hallway instead of sitting through their last lesson of the day any longer.

"Forget that--what teacher actually _teaches_ the first day of class? This is gonna suck." Stiles predicted.

"At least we have it together, right?" Ashton asked Scott, who had his eyes glued to where Allison was standing by her locker with Lydia Martin. When he didn't answer, she looked over to what was distracting him and shook her head. "Can someone tell me how New Girl is here all of five minutes and she's already hanging out with Lydia's clique?"

"Because she's hot." Stiles said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Beautiful people herd together. That's why Lydia doesn't ask _you_ to be in her clique."

"I'm literally your twin, you idiot. We have the same hair color, eye color, freckles--the only thing different is our gender. You can't call me ugly without calling yourself ugly."

"Excuse me--I'm beautiful! I definitely absorbed all the beauty in the womb." Stiles argued, putting his hand on Scott's shoulder. "Scott, didn't I absorb all the beauty?"

The touch seemed to snap Scott out of his trance and he turned to look at the twins. "Ready for practice?"

"Wow, thanks for listening to us." Stiles rolled his eyes.

The three of them headed to the locker rooms and got changed, before meeting back up on the field in full gear.

"First line, here I come." Scott told himself as they neared the other players.

"But if you play, I'll have no one to talk to on the bench. Are you really gonna do that to your best friend?" Stiles complained.

"I can't sit out again. My whole life has been sitting on the sidelines." Scott told him. "This season, I make first line. I have to."

"McCall!" Coach Finstock hollered as he walked up to them. His dark hair was unruly and standing in all directions, just as it was the year prior when they'd seen him last, and he still had the wild look in his eyes that made him appear slightly like a potential psychopath.

"Yeah?"

"You're on goal." he told him, throwing a goalie stick in his direction. Scott dropped his own lacrosse stick to catch it and stared at it like it was about to bite him.

"But...I've never played goalie." Scott told him.

"I know--scoring some shots will give the team a confidence boost. It's a first day back thing. Get 'em energized! Fired up!"

"What about me?" Scott asked.

"Try not to take any in the face." Coach grinned, slapping him lightly across the cheek, before turning around and heading back towards the bleachers. He called over his shoulder, "Good to see you back, Stilinski!"

"Good to be back, Coach!" Stiles said.

"I _definitely_ wasn't talking to you." Coach shook his head, much to Stiles annoyance.

"Have fun watching me from the bench all season." Ashton smirked at her twin, who pushed her away from him and Scott. She stumbled into Brynlee Finstock, the coach's daughter who was a year older than her. "Hey, Brynlee."

"Hi." She greeted her amiably. "Long time no see. How was your summer?"

"Incredibly boring. I'm glad to be back here to carry the team with you for another season."

"Kicking the boys' asses into gear is pretty much the highlight of my life, too." Brynlee agreed with a smile.

They all got into position and took turns making shots at the goal behind Scott. Ashton and Stiles watched him fail miserably at the new position for a few rounds, until he managed to catch one of the balls. Scott's mouth dropped open in shock, looking between the ball and his best friends on the field as if he wasn't sure if it had really happened.

"Yeah!" Stiles shouted, pumping his fist in the air. "That is MY friend!"

"Nice job, Scott!" Ashton exclaimed, realizing that Scott really _had_ protected the goal for the first time in his life.

* * *

Later that night, Scott, Stiles, and Ashton found themselves back in the Beacon Hills Preserve. Daylight was still illuminating the woods and they fully intended to be back in the car before the sun went down--none of them wanting to face whatever animal had bitten Scott the night before.

"I don't know what it was. It was like...I had all the time in the world to catch the ball." Scott tried to explain, still on his high from their lacrosse practice. "And that's not the only weird thing! I can... _hear_ stuff I shouldn't be able to hear. _Smell_ things."

"Smell things? Like what?" Stiles wondered.

"Like...mint mojito gum in your pocket."

Stiles cocked an eyebrow at him and reached into his pocket, saying "I don't have mint mojito..."

Scott threw his arms out to the sides dramatically and smirked as Stiles pulled out a half-unwrapped piece of gum from his jacket pocket and looked at it in surprise.

"Ew, Stiles." Ashton said, her nose scrunching up in disgust. "That's really gross."

"So...all this started with the bite?" Stiles wondered, putting the gum back into his pocket after rewrapping it better.

Scott nodded and asked, "What if it's like an infection? Like my body's flooding with adrenaline before I go into shock or something?"

"You know what? I actually think I've heard of this--it's a specific kind of infection." Stiles revealed with a relaxed voice that made Scott's look turn more serious. Ashton just rolled her eyes, guessing what he was about to say.

"Are you serious?" Scott asked him.

"Yeah...yeah, I think it's called _lycanthropy._ "

"You're an asshole, Stiles." Ashton told him.

"What's that?" Scott questioned obliviously. "Is that bad?"

"Oh, yeah--it's the worst." Stiles nodded, putting his arm over Scott's shoulders. "But only once a month."

"Once a month?"

"Mm-hmm...on the night of the full moon." Stiles snickered, before letting out a soft howl at Scott.

"Hey, man." Scott glared, pushing him away.

"You're the one who heard a wolf howling!" Stiles chuckled.

"There could be something seriously wrong with me."

"I know! You're a werewolf!" Stiles said, following it with a low _"Grrr!"_

"Knock it off, Stiles." Ashton told him seriously, knowing that Scott was really getting freaked out. She hooked her hand around Scott's bicep and hugged his arm comfortingly. "Ignore him. I don't know what's wrong with you, but an adrenaline rush wouldn't make you able to smell centuries old gum in Stiles' pocket or give you lacrosse skills for a whole day after the attack."

"So, what do you think it is then, Ash? What would give me these crazy enhanced senses all of the sudden like this?"

"I mean...I don't think Stiles was saying it the right way, but...I don't know. If you thought you heard a wolf, maybe it _was_? Myths and stuff had to come from somewhere, right?"

"Yeah, they were passed down by the freakin' fairies and elves." Stiles said sarcastically. "Dumb-ass."

"Can you prove werewolves _aren't_ real? Mom thought they were--you know that. I mean, why not? A wolf bites him and he now has superpowers--do you have a better guess as to what might be going on?"

"I can't believe I'm actually having this conversation right now." Stiles said, shaking his head. "Mom was sick when she was thinking stuff like that--what's your excuse?"

"I'm not a werewolf, so can we just try to think of another possibility here?" Scott asked them.

"Hey, you know I was kidding." Stiles told him. "But, if you see me in shop class trying to melt all the silver I can find, it's because Friday's a full moon."

Scott didn't have the energy to deal with Stiles' jokes, so they walked on in silence until they came to the clearing that the stampede had come through. He looked over to where the body had been and saw... _nothing_.

"No, I-I-I could have _sworn_ this was it." Scott stutterd, glancing around confusedly. "I saw the body, the deer came running...I dropped my inhaler."

"Maybe the killer moved the body." Stiles suggested.

"Well, if he did, I hope he left my inhaler. Those are like eighty bucks."

Scott crouched down and began shuffling the leaves out of the way, searching for the inhaler. Stiles watched him, not feeling the need to actually get on the ground and help unless asked. Ashton wsa debating assisting, but then she caught movement in the corner of her eye and looked over to find a man with black hair, stubble around his jaw, and light eyes. She jumped in surprise at his sudden appearance and grabbed onto Stiles' arm, getting his attention. Stiles looked up at Derek Hale and quickly swatted Scott.

"What are you doing here?" The man asked with a hard edge to his voice as he walked up to them. "Huh? This is private property."

"Oh, sorry, man." Stiles said, purposely trying to keep his voice steady. "We didn't know."

"Yeah, we were just looking for something, but...uh, forget it." Scott mumbled, deciding that he'd rather get a new inhaler than upset the tall, dangerous-looking guy in front of him.

Derek just looked at them curiously and took Scott's inhaler out of his pocket, before tossing it towards him. Scott caught it easily without looking and then watched Derek turn and walk away.

"Okay, c'mon, I gotta get to work." Scott said after a few seconds of staring after him. Something about him felt almost...familiar. He was intrigued by him.

"Dude, that was Derek Hale." Stiles told them. "You remember, right? He's only like a few years older than us."

"Remember what?" Scott asked, clearly not recalling anything from the name.

"Y'know...the Hale family?" Ashton prompted.

"They all burned to death in a fire like six years ago."

"I wonder what he's doing back?" Scott pondered.

"Who knows." Ashton shrugged. "I'm not gonna ask him."

"C'mon." Stiles finally said, starting back the way they came.


	3. supernatural study night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stiles and Ashton realize that Scott might have actually been bitten by a werewolf and spend the night researching from their mother's old books on the supernatural.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this a day early, since it's finished!

The Stilinski family was seated around the circular dinner table, poking at the stiff spaghetti noodles on their plates. Nobody bothered to acknowledge that the meatballs were still frozen in the center, but they all pushed them towards the edges of their plates away from the rest of the pasta. The heavy silence in the dining room was broken by the sound of the twins’ text tones going off simultaneously.

“It hasn’t been ten minutes since you got your phones back, and you’re already texting at the dinner table?” Their father’s voice had an edge of thinly veiled dissatisfaction.

“Are we not supposed to do that? Honestly, I have no idea how this whole eating together thing works--I thought this table was just for decoration.” Stiles said, the metal of his phone clinking against the rim of his plate as he set it down.

“Well, families typically talk to each other at dinner. About their days or their thoughts.” he prompted. “How was school?”

“Boring.” the twins chorused in unison.

“But Scott played goalie in lacrosse practice and actually caught the ball, so that was cool.” Stiles added.

Ashton glanced slyly at her brother before asking her dad, “How was work?”

He sighed before answering her. “Frustrating. Still trying to find the other half of the body and we have no leads. It’s probably an animal--that’s not unheard of in the middle of the woods.”

Their phones went off again and Ashton subtly unlocked her screen under the table to read the messages in the **_Triple Threat_** group chat with Scott.

 **Scott:  
** _GUYS  
_ _the bite is healed. I went to clean it and it was totally healed like it never existed._

 **Ashton** :  
 _wdym healed?! It’s gone?_

 **Scott** :   
_yes! that’s what healed means!!_

Ashton nudged Stiles and looked pointedly at his phone. He got the hint and unlocked the screen.

 **Stiles** :  
_maybe it wasn’t as bad as you thought it was?_

 **Scott** :  
 _stiles_ _my PAPER CUTS don’t heal overnight  
_ _I feel like an ANIMAL BITE wouldn’t heal that fast either_

 **Ashton** :  
 _so...what does this mean??_

 **Scott:  
** _i dont know_

 **Stiles** :  
 _AAAHOOOOOO! GRRRR!_ ****

 **Scott** :  
 _this isn’t funny!!  
_ _hold up allison is here i gtg_

 **Stiles** :  
 _good luck bro_

“Put your phones away,” Noah chastised, throwing a cloth napkin at them across the table.

“Okay, okay, we’re sorry,” Ashton laughed, throwing the cloth back at him. She pocketed her phone and continued eating the barely-edible pasta. “Scott has a crush and she seems at least a little interested in him, so that’s cool.”

“There we go--I knew he had it in him,” Noah laughed. The McCall and Stilinski families had been so intermixed since the kids became best friends in elementary school that he and Melissa McCall tended to look at each other’s kids as their own, too. “Has anyone caught either of your eyes this year?”

“Stiles is still in love with Lydia Martin,” Ashton snickered. “And she still has no idea he exists.”

“Shut up, Ashton,” Stiles growled. “Not like you’re having any luck with anyone either.”

“Don’t pick on your brother. Let him figure his love life out himself,” Noah told her.

“Thank you, Dad. I try to tell her that all the--” Stiles was cut off by the sharp sound of Noah’s phone ringing under the table.

“Sorry, I’ve gotta take this.” He excused himself, walking out of the dining room and answering the phone with a, “Stilinski.”

Stiles bolted upstairs--doubtlessly to listen in on the call--and Ashton was left to put the plates into the sink. She debated washing them, but decided against it when she realized it was Stiles’ night to do them and she wasn’t _that_ nice of a sister.

Ashton headed upstairs to her room and sat on her bed, propping several pillows up against the white headboard to lean against as she opened the Netflix app on her phone. Before she even found a movie to play, Stiles burst into her room.

“Why don’t you ever knock?” She complained, setting the phone down on her nightstand.

“Forget that!” Stiles said, shutting her door and jumping onto her bed beside her. “The fiber analysis came back on the half of the body they found! You’ll never guess--well, I mean technically--”

“Spit it out!” Ashton urged, curious as to what had her brother so riled up.

“They found animal hair on the body! Specifically _wolf_ hair.”

“Holy shit. So, Scott _was_ bitten by a wolf.”

“Yep.”

“And now he’s healing incredibly fast, has insanely enhanced senses, and he’s suddenly athletic.” A little crease formed between Ashton’s eyebrows.

“Yeah...and he didn’t even seem to need his inhaler at all when we were in the woods earlier. Last night, he was struggling to breathe when we were only a few minutes in--but today he didn’t seem winded, like, at all.”

“Stiles, that can’t mean…” Ashton trailed, guessing where he was going with it.

“Of course not. Right?”

“Right. Because that’s impossible.”

“I thought you said it couldn’t be proven impossible?” Stiles reminded her.

“Scott can’t be a werewolf!” She hissed. “I was playing Devil’s Advocate earlier--werewolves aren’t actually real.”

“Are we sure?” Stiles asked after a few silent moments. Ashton just stared at him and shook her head. “Should we tell him?”

“No, he seemed very against the idea earlier,” Ashton reasoned. “Plus, he said Allison stopped by the shelter. We can’t cock block him--that sucks.”

“How would you know it sucks? You’ve never even kissed anyone, let alone been interrupted doing anything more.”

“You’re a virgin, too.”

“Yes, but you will be one longer. I refuse to be the last one in this house to have sex.”

“Your idiocy is stinking up my room. Leave me to my Netflix.” Ashton rolled her eyes, pushing him off her bed with her foot.

* * *

The next afternoon, Stiles and Ashton were waiting for Scott on the field to tell him the news. They hadn’t had a chance to talk to him all day, since he seemed to be following Allison around like a lost puppy. As soon as they saw him, Stiles grabbed him by the arm and pulled him aside.

“Stiles, I’m playing the first elimination, man.” Scott complained. “Can it wait?”

“Just hold on, okay? I overheard my dad on the phone--”

“He tapped it.” Ashton explained quickly, but received an annoyed push from her brother to make her stop talking.

“The fiber analysis came back from the lab in L.A. They found animal hairs on the body from the woods!” Stiles told him.

“Stiles, I gotta go.” Scott shrugged him off.

“Wait, no! Scott! You’re not gonna believe what the animal was!”

“I can’t talk about this right now,” Scott blew him off, running towards the field.

“It was a wolf,” Stiles sighed. He shared a concerned look with Ashton and they followed him onto the field as Coach Finstock blew his whistle to gather them.

“Let’s go, gather ‘round!” Coach hollered. “Bring it in, come on!”

Allison walked by to sit on the bleachers and Scott looked at her with a dopey smile, raising his hand to wave.

“Got a question, McCall?” Coach asked him, noticing his hand.

“What?” Scott said, pulling himself back to earth after his brain stopped working in Allison’s presence.

“You raised your hand. You have a question?”

“Oh...no. I was just, uh…” Scott mumbled, his cheeks tinting pink. “Nothing, sorry.”

“Okay,” Coach said after an awkward pause. He began walking around, looking at each of the players. “You know how this goes. If you don’t make the cut, you’re most likely sitting on the bench for the rest of the season. You make the cut...ya _play_. Your parents are proud. Your girlfriend loves ya! Everything else is, uh... _cream cheese_. Now get out there and show me whatcha got!”

Scott and Jackson took their places in front of each other, going head-to-head for the ball. They both crouched down and put their lacrosse sticks out, staring intently at each other and the ball. The whistle blew and Scott had scooped up the ball and was sprinting down the field before Jackson even realized what was going on.

The other players attempted to block Scott, but he twisted and turned with unnatural fluidity to avoid them. Right before making it to the goal, three players formed a wall in front of him, knowing he’d have to stop—but he didn’t. He leapt into the air and did a side flip over them, before touching down and slinging the ball into the goal.

The entire team stared at Scott as if he’d grown an extra head and Ashton looked over at Stiles with worry written all over her face. This was definitely not normal Scott.

“McCall, get over here!” Coach yelled. Scott jogged up to him and took his helmet off. “What in God’s name was _that_? This is a lacrosse field. What-- are you trying out for the gymnastics team?”

“No, coach.”

“What the hell _was_ that?”

“I don’t know...I-I was just trying to take the shot,” Scott explained, all of the confidence draining from his face.

“Yeah, well, you made the shot. And guess what?” Coach said, a wide smile forming on his face as he clapped his hand on his shoulder. “You’re starting, Buddy. You made first line.”

Scott let out a few laughs in disbelief, before looking over at Stiles, who was seated on the bench, and Ashton beside him. They both looked worried, but he was so excited that he was oblivious to it.

“This is bad,” Stiles whispered to Ashton. “Do you think Mom’s old supernatural books are still in the office?”

“I doubt dad would’ve thrown them out.”

* * *

Stiles and Ashton walked into the Stilinski house and went to their father’s office. They opened the door slowly, making sure their dad wasn’t working in there, and then ran over to the old wooden bookshelf behind his small desk.

“I always wanted to read these when we were younger,” Ashton whispered, brushing her fingers over the dusty spines of the books on the lowest shelf. “Dad never let me, because he thought they’d scare me or something.”

“No, Dad never let you because he didn’t believe Mom about the supernatural world and didn’t want her filling our heads with it,” Stiles revealed. “I overheard him saying that to Mom before she got sick.”

“It’s weird, right? That mom was so passionate about this and we ended up in it, even despite Dad trying to keep it from us? Think it’s a coincidence?”

“We don’t have time to start questioning everything right now. Tomorrow is the full moon and we need to figure out how to help Scott.” Stiles told her sternly, gathering several of the books into his arms. “Let’s go--we’ve got a long night ahead of us.”

Ashton grabbed the remaining books and followed her brother out of the office. They hurried upstairs and into Stiles’ room, before dropping all of the books onto the bed to look at what they had to work with.

“Spirit realms, witchcraft, vampires, werewolves, banshees--Mom had quite a collection, huh?” Ashton said, reading the titles. “A few mixed species ones, too.”

“I’ll start looking on the internet and you start reading about Werewolves. We can cross-reference,” Stiles told her, sitting down at his desk. Ashton grabbed the closest book, labeled _History of Lycanthropy_ , and crawled under the covers of the bed to get comfortable.

“Want an addy?” Stiles offered, holding up the orange pill bottle he kept in his desk drawer. Before she even had the chance to answer, he unscrewed the cap, dropped a few of the pills into his hand, and then tossed a couple in her direction. They ended up landing somewhere in the blankets, much to her annoyance.

“Are you kidding me? Is this blanket even clean?”

“Definitely not, but you’re already laying in it, so...it won’t kill you.”

“Ew,” She groaned, rustling the blankets until she found the pills. “You have water?”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, getting a water bottle out of his backpack and taking a swig, before tossing it to Ashton, who caught it and took a sip. “All nighter, here we come.”

* * *

A knock at the door caused the twins to violently jump. Stiles quickly shut his laptop screen and crept over to the door.

He opened it just enough to see who it was, and upon seeing that it was Scott, said, “Get in--you’ve gotta see this.”

Scott looked around the room, taking in the dozen books and hand-written notes around Ashton on the bed and the printed pages piled all over Stiles’ desk.

“We’ve been up all night reading and cross-referencing,” Ashton told him.

“Websites, books, everything we could find--all this information,” Stiles explained, motioning around the room at all of their work.

“How much adderall have you guys had today?” Scott laughed.

“Does today include last night as well, or…?”

“A lot. Doesn’t matter,” Stiles said, looking through the papers on the desk. “Okay, just listen.”

“Is this about the body? Did they find out who did it?”

“No, they’re still questioning people--even Derek Hale,” Stiles waved him off.

“Oh, the guy in the woods that we saw the other day.”

“Yes!” Stiles confirmed. “Yes, but that’s not it--okay?”

“Forget the body--this is about you!” Ashton told him, getting out of bed and stretching her arms above her head in hopes of relieving the pain in her lower back from sitting in the bed all night.

“What do you mean?”

“Remember that joke from the other day? Not a joke anymore. The wolf, the bite in the woods--”

“Stiles and I started doing all this research about your...situation.”

“Do you even know why a wolf howls?” Stiles asked him.

“Should I?” Scott asked.

“It’s a signal, okay?” Stiles told him. “When a wolf’s alone, it howls to signal its location to the rest of the pack.”

“So, if you heard a wolf howling, that means others could’ve been nearby. Maybe a whole pack of them!”

“A whole pack of wolves?” Scott asked, surprised.

“No, _werewolves_ ,” The twins corrected together.

“Are you seriously wasting my time with this? You guys know I’m picking up Allison in an hour.” Scott said, getting annoyed. He went to grab his backpack off the bed and leave, but Stiles grabbed his arm to stop him.

“I saw you on the field yesterday, Scott. Wh-What you did wasn’t just amazing, alright? It was _impossible_.”

“Yeah, so I made a good shot.” Scott shrugged.

“No, you made an incredible shot!” Stiles argued. “I mean...the way you moved--your speed, your reflexes...people can’t just suddenly do that overnight.”

“And there’s the vision and the senses--and don’t think we haven’t noticed that you don’t even need your inhaler anymore.” Ashton challenged.

“Guys, I can’t think about this right now.” Scott told them. “We’ll talk tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? What? No!” Stiles exclaimed. “The full moon is _tonight_ \--don’t you get it?”

“What are you trying to do? I just made first line, I got a date with a girl who I can’t believe wants to go out with me, and everything in my life is somehow perfect--why are you trying to ruin it?”

“We aren’t trying to ruin it, Scott. We’re worried about you. This could be super dangerous for you to go out tonight.” Ashton reasoned.

“We’re trying to help. You’re _cursed_ , Scott. You know, and it’s not just that the moon will cause you to physically change...it also just so happens to be that it’s when your bloodlust will be at its peak.”

“Bloodlust?” Scott scoffed.

“Yeah, your urge to kill.”

“I’m already starting to feel an urge to kill, Stiles,” Scott warned, glaring at him.

“You gotta hear this,” Stiles told him, grabbing a book from the bed beside Scott’s backpack and opening it. _“The change can be caused by anger or anything that raises your pulse.”_ Alright? I haven’t seen anyone raise your pulse like Allison does. You’ve gotta cancel this date. I’m gonna call her right now.”

Stiles quickly reached into the front pocket of Scott’s backpack where he knew he kept his phone and took it out, unlocking it with ease and going to his contacts.

“What are you doing?” Scott asked him in alarm, reaching out for the phone to get it back, but Stiles held the phone out to keep it away from him.

“I’m cancelling the date,” Stiles answered.

“No--give it to me!” Scott growled, grabbing Stiles and throwing him against the wall. With one hand, he held Stiles firmly against the wall, as his other fist reeled back, ready to strike him. Stiles flinched and turned his face a bit, prepared to get hit.

“Scott!” Ashton yelled, jumping out to grab hold of his forearm. “Scott, _stop_!”

Realization flashed across his angered face briefly, before he pushed Ashton backwards, causing her to fall onto the bed, and let go of Stiles. He yelled in frustration and hit the back of Stiles’ computer chair, knocking it over. Stiles and Ashton shared a scared look as Scott closed his eyes and shook his head, then glanced between them and the chair. Neither twin made eye contact with him, unsure of how to handle the situation. He just got physical with them--something their Scott never would have done.

“I’m sorry,” He whispered, moving away from them both and picking up his backpack beside Ashton. “I gotta go get ready for that party.”

Scott left the room and Ashton asked, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” Stiles nodded, rubbing the back of his head. “But Scott isn’t.”

“Yeah.”

Stiles reached down and lifted the chair back up the right way, then froze when he saw the back. He slowly turned it around towards his sister, showing her the four claw marks that were sliced through the back of the leather seat.


	4. full moon party

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott's first full moon ruins his first date with Allison.

The party was in full swing by nine o'clock, with loud music blaring from several speakers. With the stuffy air trapped in the overcrowded house, the burning scent of alcohol and weed was overwhelmingly potent. On her way out to get some air, Ashton spotted Brynlee leaning against the wall of the living room. She walked over to join her, since her brother had already ditched her for the few girls intoxicated enough to give him attention for once.

"Not drinking tonight?" Brynlee asked her, noticing that Ashton's hands were empty.

"My brother is already on his way to shitfaced, so...I figure I'm either the DD or he's going to drive us into a ditch on the way home. Again," Ashton laughed, looking over at Stiles, who was dancing with a group of people a few feet away.

"That dress looks flawless on you." Stiles said, flashing a smile at a girl with dark curls and amber eyes. He handed her a can of beer and she took it, returning the grin as she opened it and took a sip.

"She seems to like him."

"He hasn't had enough time to annoy her yet. Give him a couple minutes."

Brynlee uttered a reply, but Ashton wasn't listening any longer. Her attention was drawn to Scott's familiar figure as he stumbled through the crowd of people, a disoriented expression across his face. Ashton felt worry clench in her stomach as she noticed his hands clutching his head so tightly his knuckles turned white.

"Scott?" Ashton called, heading towards him.

Stiles saw his best friend, his face twisted in pain, and chased after the both of them, yelling, "Scott, you good?"

The two siblings followed after Scott as he made for the door. He quickened his pace as he headed for the stairs, but Ashton reacted faster and grabbed his arm.

"Are you alright? What's wrong?" She asked him, but he swatted her hand away from him and staggered down to the street, looking for his parked car.

Allison and Stiles ran out in time to see his car speeding off down the street, leaving the three of them to stand there, looking at each other awkwardly--Allison wanting an explanation and the twins trying to come up with something through panicked eye contact. Stiles opened his mouth, obviously about to try to come up with an excuse, but another male voice beat him to it.

"Allison," Derek called. Ashton and Stiles jumped, startled by his presence. "I'm a friend of Scott's. My name's Derek."

"Hello," Allison said politely, looking him over with a puzzled expression.

"Scott's having a rough night. I can take you home, if you want. He was your ride, right?"

"Yeah, um...thanks." Allison nodded, following him to his black Chevrolet Camaro.

"Since when are Scott and Derek friends?" Ashton asked, watching Allison get into the car.

"I don't know, but we need to go find Scott before he wolfs out and starts eating people or something."

The siblings all but sprinted to the Jeep and Stiles reached for the handle of the driver's door, but Ashton stopped him and held her hand out.

"Keys," Ashton said.

"What? Ash, I'm fine. I didn't even drink that much."

"Yeah, the way you smell like a damn brewery really makes me believe you," Ashton said as she grabbed the keys from his hand and pushed him away, before climbing into the driver's seat. Stiles hurried around the front of the jeep and hopped into the passenger seat.

They made it to the McCall residence in record time and Stiles leaped out of the jeep before it had even stopped, running to the front door and unlocking it. By the time he pushed the door open and started up the stairs, Ashton was on his heels.

Stiles knocked on Scott's bedroom door frantically, hoping he was in there and not running wildly around the woods.

"Go away," Scott groaned, causing the twins to let out a relieved sigh.

"Scott, it's us," Stiles told him, shaking the door handle. Scott opened the door about an inch, just so they could speak easier, but wouldn't let them into the room with him.

"Let us in, Scott, we can help," Stiles said, trying to push the door open, but Scott was holding it firmly in place.

"No!" Scott growled. "Listen, you gotta find Allison."

"She's fine, alright?" Ashton assured him. "We saw her get a ride from the party. She's--she's totally fine."

"I think I know who it is."

"Just let us in! We can try--" Stiles pressed, but Scott cut him off.

"It's Derek! Derek Hale's the werewolf. He's the one that bit me. He's the one that killed the girl in the woods!"

Stiles and Ashton looked at each other in alarm, realizing that Derek knew Scott was having a rough night, because he was having the same problem. And now he had Allison.

"Derek's the one who drove Allison from the party," Stiles said hesitantly.

The bedroom door slammed shut and locked again, and Ashton punched Stiles' arm.

"You idiot! Why would you tell him that right now?"

"I don't know!" Stiles said, banging on the door. "Scott! You in there?"

"He probably went out the window--let's go." Ashton guessed, grabbing Stiles and pulling him towards the stairs.

As they stepped out onto the front porch, they heard a heart-stopping roar around the side of the house. Ashton grabbed Stiles and stopped him from going out any further.

"Was that...?" Stiles whispered, looking at his sister with wide eyes.

"My bet's on yeah." Ashton nodded. "He's probably headed to Allison's house. We should go."

"And say what? What if Derek is there? What if _Scott_ is there?" Stiles asked, following Ashton as they crossed the front lawn to where they had parked the Jeep.

"My main concern is if _Allison_ is there. If she isn't then Derek probably has her and Scott could fight Derek, who would probably kill him."

"Yeah...did you see that guy's shoulders? He's crazy fit. He could kick my ass by looking at me." Stiles agreed, earning a questioning look from Ashton.

"You like Derek Hale, Stiles?" She asked, starting the Jeep and taking off down the street.

"I can't notice that he has muscles and broad shoulders? It doesn't mean I _like_ him--I just have eyes. You're lying if you tell me you didn't notice his body." Stiles accused.

"I _did_ notice Derek's body...and those blue eyes...and the light stubble across his jawline."

"His eyes are green." Stiles corrected, before realizing that Ashton had set him up when she grinned smugly. "Okay, so I looked a little closely. This doesn't even matter right now! Scott is running around as a werewolf!"

They pulled up to the Argent house and ran to the door in a hurry. Stiles rang the doorbell a few times, before Ashton elbowed him harshly in the ribs.

"Don't be such a spaz," She hissed.

"We don't have time," Stiles urged, starting to bang his palm on the door loudly. "Come on, come on, come on!"

"Stiles!" Ashton said, pulling him away from the door. "Her parents are gonna call the _police_ , if you do this shit."

Suddenly, the front door opened to reveal Mrs. Argent, who looked at them skeptically.

"Hi, Mrs. Argent. Um...you have no idea who I am. Who we are." Stiles told her and Ashton wished Stiles wasn't such an idiot for at least the fifth time that day. "We're friends of your daughter's. Look, this is gonna sound kinda crazy--um, really crazy, actually. You know what--crazy doesn't even describe--"

Ashton pinched his side, glaring at him. Was he really about to talk about Scott being a werewolf to this woman they didn't even know?

"Allison!" Mrs. Argent called behind her, obviously not sure how to address the spastic boy on her porch. "It's for you."

Allison appeared on the landing above her mother and peered down over the rail at the Stilinskis with confusion etched into her features.

"Hi."

"We just, uh...we just wanted to tell you that Scott ate something bad. He got stomach pains and stuff--you know how that is--and that's why he had to run home. He wanted us to come explain." Ashton lied, ignoring the way Stiles' mouth dropped open in horror for the death of his best friend's pride.

"He's not like, y'know, in the bathroom or anything like that. Just a stomachache." Stiles tried to save the situation.

"Okay." Allison nodded slowly. "Tell him I hope he feels better."

"We will. He'll call you," Ashton told her. "Anyways, we gotta go."

With that, Stiles and Ashton returned to the Jeep.

"Ate something bad?" Stiles exclaimed, once they were on the road, headed towards the woods. "Are you kidding me? You can't tell a dude's crush that he left her stranded at a party because he had the shits!"

"It could've been puke--not necessarily the shits," She reasoned. "I panicked, okay? You were just staring at her awkwardly after nearly breaking their front door down like a psycho! And you tried to tell them Scott was a werewolf--are you _crazy_?"

"We need to find him."

"If he isn't here, then he's probably looking for Derek in the woods." Ashton said. "We can't just wander through the woods alone on the night of the full moon though, Stiles. There are at least two werewolves running around. I'm not sure how we should do this."

"One of the werewolves is Scott, though."

"Yes, and last time we saw him, he leaped off his roof, _roared_ , and ran off into the night, full of rage and bloodlust."

"Well what do you suggest we do? _Nothing_?"

"Let's just drive around the perimeter of the woods, so we can pick him up as soon as he comes out...y'know, being Scott again. Going in there and ending up sliced in half like that girl wouldn't help anything."

***

They drove around for the rest of the night, only stopping once to fill the tank and grab a couple of energy drinks from the gas station. It wasn't until the sun began peeking out over the trees and Stiles was drooling on himself while unconscious in the passenger seat, that Scott emerged from the woods. In her drowsy state, Ashton didn't see him until he was about a foot away from the front of the Jeep. She screamed and jerked the wheel to the side to avoid hitting him, throwing Stiles forward into the dash since the passenger seat didn't currently have a working seatbelt. He threw his hand out at the last second to avoid hitting his head on the windshield and cursed loudly, hitting Ashton with an empty can from the cupholder between them.

"How do you have a license?!" Stiles shouted.

"I'm sorry--it's like four in the morning and I've been driving for six hours!"

"You could have asked me to drive, if you were so tired that you were going to almost kill Scott _and me_."

"You were _drunk_ and Dad would kill you if you got a DUI. Plus, Scott's fine!"

"I _am_ fine," Scott agreed, opening the passenger door. Stiles climbed into the back seat as Scott got into the Jeep. "I was _shot_ , but it healed."

"You were _shot_?" Stiles asked, leaning forward between the front seats to look at him. "Are you okay?"

"I just said I was," Scott snapped. Stiles was a little peeved that Scott was being short-tempered with him after they had just spent all night looking for him, but he knew he had a rough night and figured it wasn't personal.

"Here," Stiles offered, handing him a towel from the back seat. Scott was shirtless, so he figured he might want it. Scott gave him a small smile and wrapped it over his shoulders.

"You know what worries me the most?" Scott asked, looking out the window.

"If you say Allison, I'm gonna punch you in the head," Ashton told him.

"She probably hates me now."

"I doubt that," Stiles comforted him, squeezing his shoulder. "If she does hate you, though, it's because Ashton told her you abandoned her at the party because you got the shits, so you might wanna come up with a pretty amazing apology."

"Wait, you did _what_?" Scott wined, looking at her in betrayal.

"Stiles almost blew your secret to her and her mom--I didn't know what else to say!"

"Why not blow the secret? You could just tell her the truth and revel in the awesomeness that you're a frickin' _werewolf_!"

"Stiles, this isn't a joke. You read that stuff when we were researching--there are hunters. If Scott is outed as a werewolf, he could have people trying to _kill_ him."

"Yeah, three of them were after me last night," Scott told them. "That's who shot me. One of them shot an arrow into my arm to pin me to a tree trunk--if it wasn't for Derek, I would probably be dead or something."

"So you were with Derek?" Stiles asked.

"Yeah, he said the bite was a gift and then told me we're brothers now."

"I mean...You can do things normal people can only dream of. Your asthma is gone, your senses are dialed up, your lacrosse skills are out of this world--" Ashton listed, but Scott cut her off.

"My life is _ruined_ , Ashton! This isn't happening to you guys, so you don't get it. I'm...I'm a _monster_. I will never get to live a normal life again. I never wanted this."

"Hey, we'll get through this." Stiles said, patting his shoulder. "If we have to, we'll chain you up ourselves on full moon nights and I'll feed you live mice. I had a boa once--I could do it."

Scott looked at them both and scoffed, a smile on his face as he shook his head.


	5. aggression issues

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Scott is threatened by Derek after shifting on the field, and Derek confronts Coach Finstock about forcing him to play.

Stiles rushed into the crowded locker room, making a beeline for Scott. His eyes were wide and blank, a vacant look of shock splayed across his features. 

Stiles noted Scott’s clouded expression. He wasn’t entirely sure what caused it, so he treaded carefully as he wondered aloud about what happened after the party.

“Did you apologize to Allison?” 

“Yeah.” Scott replied, still in his daze.

“Is she giving you a second chance, or…?”

“Yeah.” 

“Yeah!” Stiles said excitedly, not picking up on Scott’s negative tone. “So, everything’s good!”

“No.”

“No?” 

“Remember...the  _ hunters _ ?” Scott asked, lowering his voice and looking over at him. “Her dad is one of them.”

“Her  _ dad _ ?”

“Shot me...” Scott confirmed quietly. “...with a crossbow.”

“Allison’s father?”

“Yes! Her father! Keep up!” Scott hissed, putting his face in his hands and letting out a stressed whine. “Oh, my god!”

“Scott, you gotta snap out of this. Make a plan.” Scott didn’t seem to register Stiles’ words. “Scott!” He finally blinked when Stiles lightly slapped his cheek. “Hey, you okay? You’re good. He didn’t recognize you right?”

“No...N-No, I don’t think so.”

“Does she know about him?”

“Oh...I don’t know...what if she does? Oh, she’s gonna kill me, man, I can’t--” Scott panicked, his breathing speeding up to the verge of hyperventilation. Coach Finstock then blew the whistle loudly to signal practice starting, and Stiles put his hands on Scott’s shoulders to calm him down.

“Okay, just...focus on lacrosse. Okay, Scott, here. Take this and this.” Stiles said, picking up his gear off the ground and pushing it against Scott’s chest. “Take this, take this--just focus on lacrosse for now. That’s all you gotta do, yeah?”

“Lacrosse,” Scott agreed, nodding. 

“Yeah, here we go!” Stiles encouraged, hitting his shoulder to encourage him. “Get changed and I’ll see you out on the field.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Stiles left the locker room and ran up to Ashton, cutting into her conversation with Brynlee. Much to her annoyance, he grabbed her arm and pulled her away from the conversation.

Stiles darted out of the locker room and onto the field, glancing around at the players casually passing the ball back and forth before practice started. He spotted Ashton standing with Brynlee a few yards away and ran up to her, pulling her away from her conversation by her arm.

“Allison’s dad is the hunter who shot Scott with a crossbow the other night!” 

“Allison’s  _ dad _ ?” The shock was evident in her voice.

“Yeah, but Scott doesn’t think he recognized him.”

“And if he did?”

“Then we’ll figure it out! I don’t know.”

“Great…” her voice dripped with sarcasm.

“Yeah...Oh, and Allison is giving him a second chance.”

“But...her dad’s a werewolf hunter. What happens when she invites him over to meet her parents and they try to kill him?”

Stiles paused for a moment, then groaned loudly and said, “We’ll just… cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“ _ Great! _ Seems like you’ve got everything figured out, don’t you?” She shot him a dirty look before turning her attention to the playing field as Coach blew his whistle. 

Practice began and everyone took their places. Within seconds, Jackson rammed into Scott and sent him roughly onto the ground.

“McCall! Hey, McCall!” Coach Finstock barked, walking up to him as he lined up again to face Jackson. “My grandmother can move faster than that--and she’s  _ dead _ . You think you can move faster than the  _ lifeless corpse  _ of my dead grandmother?”

Several guys on the team--Jackson and his friends, specifically--snickered as Coach lectured Scott, and Ashton shared a look with Stiles as they both hoped that Scott could manage his anger.

“Yes, Coach,” Scott gritted out.

“I can’t hear you.”

“Yes, Coach.” Scott repeated, loudly and more clearly.

“Then do it again.” Coach told him. He turned back to Jackson and said, “McCall’s gonna do it again!”

The whistle blew and Scott took off towards Jackson. The two of them collided and Jackson fell to the ground, clutching his shoulder in pain. Scott stumbled off to the side of the pitch, then fell to his knees as he breathed heavily. Stiles and Ashton rushed to his side, but froze when they realized that he was growling.

“I can’t control it...it’s happening,” Scott panted. 

“What? Right here?  _ Now _ ?” Stiles questioned, looking at all of the teenagers around them.

“Yes, Stiles,” Ashton told him, grabbing onto Scott’s arm and pulling him up to his feet. “We need to get him off the field.”

“I can’t,” Scott said breathlessly, but his best friends ignored him. 

Stiles grabbed onto his other arm and the two of them all but dragged him back towards the school. They stumbled into the locker room and Scott pushed them away as he collapsed onto his knees.

“You okay?” Stiles asked, watching him warily. “Scott, you okay?”

“Get away from me!” Scott roared as he clutched his head. Suddenly, he looked up at the twins with glowing golden eyes and he snarled, his sharpened teeth bared at them threateningly. Stiles nearly fell backwards onto the ground in shock, but Ashton grabbed his elbow to help him regain his balance. They backed into the lockers and realized they were trapped in the small room with him.

“Come on,” Ashton said, pulling Stiles around the corner as she made a break for the door. She knew they wouldn’t make it when a loud boom echoed around the tight space. Scott had leapt up on top of the lockers beside them, ready to pounce. In the brief second that their eyes made contact with his golden irises, a feral growl ripped out of his mouth and raised the hair on the back of their necks.

It took less than a second for Ashton to react and change course. She pulled the shell shocked Stiles down a row of lockers and Scott followed above them, jumping from beam to beam. They made it to the door, but Stiles stopped Ashton from running out.

“We can’t let him out of here.”

“What?”

“We need to keep him in here so he doesn’t go on a rampage around the school!”

Scott dropped down from the beams a few feet from them and Ashton held her breath in anticipation as he crouched, ready to attack. Stiles looked around frantically and set his sights on the fire extinguisher hanging on the wall. In a last ditch attempt to shock some sense into Scott, Stiles wrenched it off the wall and pulled the pin. He aimed directly at his face as he pressed the level to release the foam. Scott cowered against the benches, shielding his face from the spray. While he was momentarily distracted, Stiles took the opportunity to pull Ashton out of the locker room, just outside of Scott’s view. Trembling, they held their breath and hoped the foam had done its job, before they heard Scott whisper their names.

“Stiles...Ashton?”

They shared a hesitant look, but slowly went back into the room. They were relieved to see Scott sitting on the edge of a bench, drenched in sweat, with normal eyes, ears, and teeth were back to normal.

“What happened?” Scott asked, looking around at the foam and their wary expressions.

“You tried to kill us,” Stiles told him as he threw the fire extinguisher onto the ground and took his lacrosse gloves off.

“It’s like we told you before...it’s the anger. It’s your pulse rising. It’s a trigger,” Ashton sighed, walking over and sitting beside him on the bench.

“But that’s lacrosse. It’s a pretty violent game, if you haven’t noticed,” Scott groaned.

“Look, lacrosse might be violent, but it’s gonna be a lot more violent if you end up killing someone on the field. You can’t play Saturday. You’re gonna have to get out of the game,” Stiles told him.

“No, I can’t just--.”

“Scott, you tried to  _ kill  _ us,” Ashton stressed. “You almost killed your  _ best friends _ because the school douchebag happened to run into you on the field. What do you think is gonna happen if you get into shit during a game?”

“But I’m first line,” he said defeatedly.

“Not anymore.” 

* * *

That night, Scott walked into his room and immediately collapsed onto his bed. He wasn’t sure if he was just tired from shifting earlier, or if he felt drained from the stress of realizing that his life was actually ruined--even down to his first line status.

“Hey,” his mom said softly from his doorway. “Late shift for me again, but I’m taking Saturday off to see your first game.”

“Oh, Mom, you can’t,” Scott said, pushing himself up onto his elbows to look at her.

“Oh, I can, and I will,” She argued, walking into the room and standing beside his bed. “C’mon, one shift isn’t going to break us...completely. Hey, what’s wrong with your eyes?”

Scott looked up at her in alarm, assuming his eyes were glowing for some reason. His brain scrambled to come up with some sort of excuse that wasn’t ‘ _ I’m a werewolf’ _ , but it luckily wasn’t needed.

“You look like you haven’t slept in days.”

“Oh, uh, it’s nothing,” Scott shrugged, letting go of the breath he had been holding. “I’m just...stressed.”

“Just stress? Nothing else?”

“Homework.”

“I mean, it’s not like you’re on drugs or anything, right?” Melissa laughed humorlessly.

“Right now?” Scott asked, causing Melissa’s smile to drop off her face.

“ _ Right now _ ?” She repeated in alarm. “I’m sorry--what do you mean ‘right now’? Have you  _ ever  _ taken drugs?”

Scott was silent for a moment, not wanting to fully incriminate himself, before asking, “Have  _ you _ ?”

Melissa’s eyes flickered around the room uncomfortably with her eyebrows raised and her lower lip pinched between her teeth, before finally saying, “Get some sleep.”

Shortly after she left the room, an incoming video call popped up on Scott’s laptop screen, drawing his attention. He stood up and walked over to his desk, hitting ‘ _ answer’ _ as he sat down in his chair. Stiles’ picture filled the screen and he pointed a green toy gun at Scott, which triggered an obnoxious beeping and a colorful strobe light effect when he pulled the trigger.

“What did you find out?” Scott asked, more concerned with the incident at practice that day than entertaining Stiles’ antics.

“Well, it’s bad.” Stiles admitted, setting the gun down. “Jackson’s got a separated shoulder.”

“Because of me?” Scott groaned.

“Because he’s a  _ tool _ .” Stiles rolled his eyes.

“Well, is he going to play?”

“They don’t know yet. Now they’re just...counting on you for Saturday.”

Scott sighed and put his head in his hands, revealing a figure behind him as he ducked his head down. Stiles looked closer at the screen in alarm and Scott put his head back up, noticing Stiles’ concern.

“What?” Scott asked him. Stiles began typing into the chat bar, but the WiFi was slow and causing the connection to lag.

**_‘it looks like’_ ** appeared in the upper right corner of Scott’s screen and he looked at his friend in confusion.

“It looks like what?” He asked, waiting for the connection to catch back up.

**_someone’s behind you_ **

As soon as Scott read it, a hand grabbed his shoulder and dragged him out of his computer chair. Before he realized what was happening, he was thrown against his bedroom wall and Derek was behind him, holding him there.

“I saw you on the field.” Derek growled in his ear.

“Wha--what are you talking about?” Scott stuttered nervously.

“You shifted in front of them!” Derek told him. “If they find out what you are, they find out about me. About all of us! And then it’s not just the hunters after us, it’s  _ everyone _ .”

“But...they didn’t see anything. I-I swear.”

“And they  _ won’t _ !” Derek stressed. “Because if you even  _ try _ to play in that game on Saturday...I’m gonna kill you myself.”

Before Scott had a chance to respond, Derek was gone in a blur out the bedroom window, leaving it open behind him.

“Holy shit, dude.” Stiles said, getting the shaken fifteen-year-old’s attention.

“What am I gonna do?” Scott asked, returning to his desk.

“What do you mean?” Stiles scoffed. “Are you crazy? You don’t have any options--you’re not going to play.”

“Then I have to tell Coach tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

* * *

The next morning, the three teenagers walked into Beacon Hills High School and headed towards Coach Finstock’s office.

“Are you sure I have to do this?” Scott asked Ashton and Stiles as they got closer. “I  _ just  _ made first line.”

“Well, you either do this or Derek kills you,” Ashton said.

“There’s Coach!” Stiles pointed, pushing Scott towards the man as he walked into his office.

“Hey, Coach!” Scott greeted, running up to him. The older man didn’t bother addressing his presence until he was in the office, sitting on the desk.

“What is it, McCall?”

“I, uh...I can’t play in tomorrow’s game.”

“What do you mean you can’t play in the game tomorrow night?” Coach asked, his eyebrows furrowing in annoyance.

“I mean...I can’t play in the game tomorrow night,” Scott repeated as he shut the door behind him.

Stiles and Ashton crawled over to put their ears against the door so that they could still hear the conversation. A few students gave them odd looks, but they ignored them.

“You mean you can’t  _ wait  _ to play the game tomorrow night,” Coach corrected.

“No, Coach, I can’t  _ play  _ the game tomorrow night!”

“I’m not following.”

“I’m having some personal issues,” Scott tried to explain.

“Is it a girl?”

“No.”

It was partially a girl, but he couldn’t just explain that he was stressed because the girl he was interested in had a dad that wanted to kill him. 

“Is it a  _ guy _ ?” Coach tried, quickly following with, “Our goalie Danny is gay.”

“Yeah...I know, Coach, but that’s not it.”

“You don’t think Danny’s a...good-lookin’ guy?”

“I think he’s good-looking, but I--I like girls! And that’s not  _ it,  _ anyway!”

“What, is it drugs? Are you doing meth? Because I had a brother that was addicted to meth--you should’ve seen what it did to his teeth. They were all cracked and rotted...It was--it was  _ disgusting _ .”

“My... _ God _ . What happened to him?”

“He got veneers. Is that what this is about? Are you afraid of getting hurt, McCall? Because I guarantee those guys on the field won’t throw anything at you that you can’t handle--you know that, right? They’re just teenagers.”

“No,” Scott gritted his teeth, trying to figure out how to get through to Bobby Finstock without flat out telling him  _ ‘I’m a werewolf and I can’t control my shifts at all’ _ . “I’m having some issues dealing with...aggression.”

“Well, here’s the good news: that’s why you play lacrosse,” Coach grinned, clapping his hands together once in finality. “Problem solved.”

“Coach, I can’t play the game tomorrow night!” Scott growled, averting his eyes down towards his feet as he felt his emotions starting to edge at his shift.

“Listen, McCall, part of playing first line is taking on the responsibility of  _ being  _ first line. Now, if you can’t shoulder that responsibility, then you’re back on bench until you’re ready.”

“So...if I don’t play the game, you’re taking me off first line?”

“McCall, play the game,” Coach told him, putting his hand on his shoulder and guiding him back to the door. He opened it and Ashton and Stiles clumsily fell forward, before scrambling to their feet and taking off down the hall. “Jesus, Stilinskis, really?! Control your friends.”

“Yes, Coach,” Scott said, chasing after them.

Coach returned to his desk and sat in his chair. He had way too many papers to grade to deal with one of his best players trying to skip the game. He heard his door open and said, “I’m busy.”

“Why are you pushing Scott to play?” Derek asked, shutting the door behind him.

“What are you doing here, Hale? This isn’t the best time for you to be back, with everything that’s going on. There are wild animals on the loose, you know.”

“Yeah, that’s  _ why  _ I’m back. Someone killed Laura.”

“It was Laura?” Coach asked somberly, as he sat back to give him his full attention. Derek nodded and Coach sighed, scratching the back of his neck as he let the information sink in. “I’m sorry for your loss...she was a great kid.”

“She came here looking for the Alpha that’s running around. Either the Alpha or the hunters killed her--I don’t know. I’m still working on figuring it out.”

“Okay...well, why are you  _ here _ ? In my office. You know I don’t do that stuff anymore--so I can’t help you with the Alpha problem,” Coach said, closing the folder full of papers and pushing it to the corner of his desk. Apparently, the papers were not going to get graded today. 

“You can't make Scott play.”

“I’m his coach. That’s my job.”

“He can’t play on Saturday--he’s not even  _ almost  _ in control of himself. I know you know--you always do.”

“I never  _ want  _ to know.” Coach complained, massaging his temples. “Look, you weren’t in control when I started coaching you in basketball, either. Did I take it easy on you when you were a little barely-teenage fur ball of rage? No. You figured it out and he will, too.”

“I was  _ born _ this way--it was easier for me to learn to control my shifts than it is for him. He was bitten. I can’t even believe I have to come in here and explain to you how this is a horrible idea.”

“It doesn’t matter if he was born or bitten--he needs to learn how to channel the anger without letting it take over, right? That’s what sports are for.”

“He’s already hurt a player--you want to risk him  _ killing  _ one next?”

“It was just Jackson--and he hurts everyone. An occasional taste of his own medicine is good for him.” Coach waved him off. “McCall won’t kill anyone. You think I won’t keep an eye on things?”

“Coach--”

“Stop involving me--I  _ hate  _ being involved.” Coach snapped. “McCall is  _ your  _ problem. I’m his lacrosse coach. It’s my job to teach him how to play lacrosse. How to  _ win _ . It’s my job to push him, even though he’s freaked out and doesn’t believe in himself. You’re his... _ lifestyle _ coach. Instead of trying to control him with death threats--which I would bet money on the assumption that you are--and pushing him to  _ avoid _ his issues...teach him! Let him get angry. Let him lose a little control sometimes--and teach him how to reel it in. If you just teach him to run from his problems, we'll have a much bigger problem on our hands than Jackson’s separated shoulder. Lacrosse gives him a way to let the aggression out. As long as he lets it out without losing complete control, he’s fine. So, figure it out.”

“Your speeches have improved since I saw you last, Coach.”

“Get out of my office, Hale,” Coach sighed. “And stop trying to get my star player to skip games!”


	6. a book, a mage, and a plan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isaac Lahey comes to the rescue, Derek needs help from an old family friend, and Scott and the twins plan to prove that Derek Hale is a murderer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I couldn't think of a title for this chapter, so...I'll just come back to it later.

Ashton watched Stiles and Scott peer around the corner of a wall, staring at something down the hall. Curious as to who they were spying on, she crept up behind them to get in on the loop and found Sheriff Stilinski and his Deputy speaking to the principal.

“Curfew because of the body,” Scott filled them in, his head tilted towards the police officers’ conversation.

“Unbelievable. Our dad’s out looking for a rabid animal, while the jerk-off who actually killed the girl is just hanging out, doing whatever he wants,” Stiles said, shaking his head.

“Well, you can’t exactly tell your dad the truth about Derek--he’d _kill_ you. And besides, your dad wouldn’t believe you anyways,” Scott sighed.

“I can do something else though. Like finding the other half of the body,” Stiles shrugged. “We find it, we can solve the issue. We wouldn’t have to say anything about werewolves.”

“Are you _kidding_?” Scott questioned, but Stiles already started walking off towards his next class. 

The muscle in Scott’s jaw twitched in agitation as he caught sight of Allison a few yards away, shaking hands with a boy that Lydia was obviously introducing her to. As soon as Lydia and the boy left, Scott headed towards the brunette girl.

“How did you get your jacket back?” He asked, looking at the familiar black jacket that was folded over her arm.

“Excuse me?” She smiled amiably, but with a touch of confusion when he expressed that he somehow knew her jacket had gone missing after she left the party with Derek. Her demeanor quickly changed to one of discomfort as their conversation progressed.

“Your jacket...how did you get it back?”

“Lydia must have found it at the party and put it in my locker this morning. She has my combination,” she shrugged and clearly hadn’t thought much of it.

“Did she _say_ she brought it back, or did somebody give her the jacket?” Scott asked, raising his voice a bit. Ashton had watched this whole interaction from a few feet away, but began moving closer to the pair when things began to get tense. The last thing they needed was for Scott to lose his temper with Allison in front of everyone.

“Like who?” Allison wondered.

“Like Derek.”

“Your friend?”

“He’s _not_ my friend. How much did you talk to him when he drove you home?”

“Scott, passing period is almost over,” Ashton warned, noticing the way his hands were in tight fists at his sides--something she knew Allison had noticed, too, by the way she glanced down and took a step back.

“I didn’t talk to him much at all,” Allison assured him quietly.

“What did you say to him?”

“I...gotta get to class.” Allison excused herself nervously, before walking away.

“Wait, Allison!”

“No, I really...I really have to go.”

Scott tried to follow after her, but Ashton grabbed the back of his shirt and pulled him back.

“What’s wrong with you, dude? She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I didn’t say she did,” Scott denied, watching her retreating back. 

“You didn’t have to--the accusation was pretty obvious.”

“Derek is--”

“You can’t get mad at her for getting a ride from him, when _you_ ditched _her_ \--no matter how good your reasoning might have been.”

Scott groaned and pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes and said, “I need to talk to him.”

With that, Scott took off towards the doors opening to the student parking lot. 

“Scott! What about-” Ashton huffed in annoyance as the doors closed behind him. “What about last period, man?” She finished halfheartedly, already turning around to head to her class as the late bell rang.

She cursed under her breath as she sprinted into her classroom and took her seat, praying that her teacher hadn’t noticed.

“Miss Stilinski, how lovely of you to join us,” Mr. Carver said, smiling in the fake, overly-friendly way he always did when addressing her. “I hope my class wasn’t an inconvenience for you to attend this afternoon.”

“Yeah, actually, but it’s not like you care,” She mumbled under her breath. Mr. Carver ignored her, if he even heard her snide comment at all. 

“As you all know, we’re beginning our _Lord of the Flies_ unit today. We will read the first chapter together, so that I can walk you through the types of annotations I expect to see in your books when I check them every Monday,” He announced, turning towards the white board to write down the annotation key he wanted them to use. Ashton froze, realizing that she had totally forgotten to grab her book from her locker during the passing period. “Perhaps Miss Stilinski would like to read first, to redeem herself after being tardy.”

She put her head in her hands and took a deep breath, preparing herself to get the inevitable lecture about failing to take his class seriously. Right as she opened her mouth, a book was tossed onto her desk from beside her. Her eyebrows shot up and she looked to the left, where a boy with short, dirty blonde hair and light blue eyes was glancing at her bashfully. She smiled appreciatively and opened the book.

“Chapter One,” She started reading.

* * *

Derek Hale briskly walked up to the Finstock house and knocked on the front door. After a few seconds, the door opened and Brynlee froze, staring at him in shock.

“Derek Hale?” She asked, not bothering to wait for confirmation before pulling him into a hug. “Where have you _been_? It’s been like, what--six years? I wasn’t sure if you made it through the fire...”

“I’m alive,” He told her stiffly, once she released him. His eyes moved over her in surprise, taking in the way she had grown about a foot taller, her braces were gone, and he could see the edges of contact lenses around her blue irises that replaced the bulky glasses she used to wear. “You look different.”

“I was ten last time you saw me, so...I’d hope so.” 

“I went by the high school, but you weren’t there...I figured you’d probably be here. I need your help.”

“Yeah, I had a dentist appointment earlier and didn’t want to go back to school. What kind of help do you need?”

Derek looked around at the people walking on the sidewalk behind him and said, “We should talk inside.”

Brynlee nodded. “Come on in.”

He walked through the doorway and immediately noticed how little the living room had changed since he’d been there last with his sister Laura. She had spent a lot of time here with Brynlee’s brother Greenberg. 

Brynlee sat on the couch and motioned for him to sit in the big old armchair by the windows. His chair. He noted how the fireplace was decorated with several recent pictures of Brynlee and her younger sister Harlee, but there was only one photo of Greenberg. It was the same one that had been there eight years prior, still sitting directly behind a candle holder engraved with the letters _GB_.

“I’m assuming the help you need is witchcraft-related?” Brynlee asked, pulling Derek’s attention away from the mantle.

“I know your dad hates that stuff and I was hoping that you were a little more open to it,” Derek nodded.

“Well, you’re in luck. Magic hasn’t completely ruined my life yet, so I have a much higher opinion of it than he does. I’ve only been practicing for a few years, though, so I’m not sure if I’ll be able to help.”

“I don’t think it’s a complicated spell. GB was showing it to Laura a little bit before he... _passed_...and he was only fourteen, so you should probably be able to do it. It’s a spell to keep a dead werewolf in their wolf form. It uses wolfsbane and you wrap the rope around the body or something.”

“Yeah, I know the spell...it’s a concealment ritual...but who's dead?”

“Laura. I think it was hunters, but I don’t really know what happened. That’s why I’m back.”

“I’m so sorry about Laura.” Brynlee frowned, reaching out to take Derek’s hand. “I always looked up to her.”

“Yeah...me too.” Derek said uncomfortably, not wanting to address the tightness that was growing in his chest. “Can you do the spell?”

“Yeah, I can. Just gotta grab some stuff.” Brynlee stood and walked over to a large cabinet that was full of shelves lined with vials and jars of varying size and several plants and herbs.

“Great. That will solve one of my problems. Scott McCall was just sniffing around my property and I think he picked up the scent of her body that I buried by the house. Him and his friends are nosey and stupid--they’ll be back to try to find whatever Scott smelled. I’d rather them find half of a wolf than the other half of the mysterious dead girl.”

“Scott isn’t the brightest tool in the shed, but the Stilinski twins are. They’re kinda weird--especially Stiles--but they’re smart. I wouldn’t underestimate them.”

“Noted,” Derek huffed. “You got anything to locate an Alpha who could possibly be related to me and is running around biting reckless teenagers that seem to live for the sole purpose of making my life even more difficult?”

“Afraid not,” Brynlee said. “But for the record, there were a _lot_ worse people the Alpha could have bitten than Scott. Like _Jackson_. I thank the Gods every day that he was born human, because if that imbecile had any more strength than he already has, his head would probably grow so much it would fall off his shoulders.”

“I’m almost surprised he isn’t out looking for the alpha himself. He’s always wanted the bite, and the alpha seems to want a pack.”

“I’m sure he would, if he remembered anything about our world. Small blessings, right?”

“It’s a lot easier to repress memories when they aren’t staring you in the face. With werewolves back in Beacon Hills, we may have him on our hands again soon.”

“Maybe the alpha will bite him and it’ll reject?” Brynlee joked, placing a rope, a vial of clear liquid, and a wolfsbane flower into a brown leather satchel. “That would solve a problem.”

“Or it could just make our problems so much worse and I might have to kill him.”

* * *

Isaac Lahey was out of his seat and halfway out the classroom door before the bell was finished ringing, and Ashton quickly grabbed her things and chased after him.

“Hey, wait!” She called out as she ran to catch up to him. She grabbed onto his arm and he turned around to face her, his face full of confusion as he glanced in between her hand on his arm and her face. Ashton quickly realized that she was still holding onto him and let his arm go, before saying, “Sorry--I just didn’t want you to run off. You forgot your book.”

She handed the book to him, and he smiled sheepishly as he took it from her. “Thanks.”

“Yeah, thank _you_. You really saved my ass today. Mr. Carver would’ve put me in detention for the rest of the year--he hates me,” Ashton joked. “I don’t usually forget things like that...there’s just been a lot going on lately and I totally blanked.”

“It’s no problem. I forget things all the time.” Isaac shrugged with another shy smile. “Life, right?”

“Yeah...I’m Ashton.”

“I know who you are,” Isaac assured her quickly, before his face flushed a bit and he looked away from her. “I-I mean...not in a weird way. Just...I mean, I’m on the lacrosse team with you.”

“Oh, my God--Lahey, right?” Ashton realized. 

“Uh, yeah, but Isaac is good.”

“Isaac,” She mused. “I’m so sorry I didn’t recognize you--I haven’t actually seen you out of your helmet and stuff. You made first line this year, right?”

“Yeah, I did.” Isaac chuckled, wringing the back of his neck as his eyes flickered away from hers towards the floor. “And you don’t have to feel bad about not recognizing me or whatever...that helmet blocks out most of your face. If I actually saw your face during practice, I definitely wouldn’t have been able to focus enough to make first line.”

Ashton chewed on her lip and felt her cheeks grow warm. “Y’know, Mr. Carver is a pretty tough grader. I’m gonna have to study a lot this year, so...I could probably use a study partner.”

“Yeah, his tests are super hard,” Isaac agreed obliviously, before noticing the way Ashton was smirking at him with her eyebrow raised and realization hit him. “Oh, you meant we should study _together_!”

“I was suggesting that, but if you don’t want to…”

“I definitely want to. I’m sorry--I’m...a disaster.”

“It’s cute,” Ashton assured him. “Do you have a phone? I’ll put my number in and you could text me sometime.”

“Yes,” Isaac said, thrusting his hand into his pocket and fumbling to pull his phone out. The screen was partially shattered, but was still miraculously functioning for the most part. He handed it to her and said, “Sorry about the screen...I haven’t gotten it fixed yet. Obviously. So just...be careful.”

“Stop apologizing--I’m sure I’ll survive.”

“Ashton!” Stiles exclaimed, running up to the two teenagers and skidding to a stop right before he would have passed them. “We gotta go, like _now_. Have you seen the group chat? Scott said to get to his house ASAP, like five minutes ago!”

“Oh, uh...okay.” Ashton said as she finished typing her contact information into Isaac’s phone. 

“So...what’s going on here?” Stiles questioned, noticing the phone in his sister’s hand that he knew wasn’t hers and skeptically looked at the blonde for the first time since intruding on their conversation.

“I’ll talk to you later,” Ashton told Isaac as she handed the phone back to him and pushed Stiles towards the front of the school.

* * *

Stiles and Ashton let themselves into the McCall house and sprinted up the stairs to crash into Scott’s room.

“What did you find? How did you find it?  _ Where  _ did you find it?” Stiles blurted out as soon as they walked into the room. His eyes flicked wildly around the bright space for a brief second before focusing on Scott’s face. “And yes, I’ve had a lot of Adderall, so…”

“I found something at Derek Hale’s.”

“Are you kidding? What was it?” Ashton pressed, going over to sit on the edge of his bed.

“There’s something buried there--I could smell the blood.”

“That’s awesome!” Stiles exclaimed excitedly, before seeming to catch himself and look towards the ground in what was perhaps the closest thing to shame that they had seen him express. “I mean, that’s terrible. Who’s blood?”

“I don’t know...but when we do, your dad nails Derek for the murder,” Scott planned, standing up and grabbing the two shovels that he had found in his garage. “And then you guys help me figure out how to play lacrosse without shifting. Because there’s no way I’m _not_ playing that game.”

“So...what? We’re gonna go dig up Derek’s property? What’s stopping him from coming out and killing us for getting involved? Or, what if we’re just idiots and it’s a dead animal and Derek gets pissed that we trespassed for that?” Ashton criticized the plan.

“She’s right--we need to be positive that what you smelled was the other half of the body before we go digging. I don’t really want Derek to gut me for digging up his yard, if it’s just a dead squirrel.”

“How can we be sure, if we don’t dig it up?” Scott asked.

“You need to smell the other half of the body at the morgue and see if the scent is the same. If it is, we dig it up as soon as the sun goes down.”

“And how is Scott going to get access to the morgue?” Ashton wondered. “He’s a fifteen-year-old with no connection to the case and his mom works there, so everyone knows who he is.”

“He’s gonna use the door to walk in and get out before anyone notices. If they catch him, he can say he has a sick curiosity about dead people or something--it’ll be fine.”


	7. a few more pieces to the puzzle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ashton and Stiles get into an argument, Ashton receives some new information during a ride home from Derek, and the twins find an old Polaroid.

With a solid sixty-seven percent of a logical plan, the three of them hopped into the Jeep and drove to the hospital, quickly jumping into action.

“Ashton and I will hang out in the waiting area and we’ll stall any doctors or whatever who try to go into the morgue. Just be fast,” Stiles whispered, clapping him on the shoulder. Scott nodded, before slipping into the hallway that led to the morgue.

“I can’t believe we’re doing this,” Ashton mumbled, looking around. She was almost surprised at how nobody seemed to notice that they were standing there without any kind of injury or reason to be there. The hospital must not have been too concerned about the possibility that anyone would try to break into a morgue, let alone teenagers. 

Stiles glanced around the room and did a double take when he noticed a girl with strawberry blonde hair sitting in one of the chairs along the wall.

“Lydia Martin is here,” Stiles breathed, getting Ashton’s attention. “Oh, my God... this is my chance.”

“Chance for what?”

“Go away--I don’t know you,” Stiles said, pushing Ashton down the hallway and out of Lydia’s line of sight. He leaned against the wall with his arm and smiled at the girl in an attempt to appear casual. “Hey, Lydia. You probably don’t remember me...um, I sit behind you in biology. Anyway, I’ve always thought that we just had this kind of...connection? Unspoken, of course. I don’t know--maybe it would be kinda cool to get to know each other a little better.”

“Hold on, give me a second,” Lydia sighed as she looked up at him with lines forming between her perfectly plucked eyebrows and she tilted her head to the side to remove a wireless earbud from her ear. “Yeah, I didn’t get any of what you just said. Is it worth repeating?”

“Uh, heh, no. Sorry. I’ll just sit...you don’t care,” Stiles said defeatedly, heading back down the hallway to where Ashton had been sitting around the corner, listening to the interaction.

“When are you gonna get over her?” Ashton asked.

“I won’t!” Stiles snapped at her, grabbing a pamphlet on menstruation off the table beside him and opening it. “It doesn’t get better than Lydia Martin, okay? I know you don’t like her because you’re jealous or something, but she’s  _ perfect _ . She’s beautiful and intelligent--”

“--and bitchy and egotistical and cares more about popularity and coming out on top, than people’s feelings,” Ashton cut him off. “You think I’m  _ jealous  _ of someone like her?”

“Why wouldn’t you be? She’s smarter, prettier, funnier... every guy likes her... she has a friend group that wants to hang out with her, instead of having to tag along with her brother and his friend because she can’t make her own.”

“You really think that?” Ashton asked with a flat tone. Stiles kept his nose in the pamphlet, not bothering to acknowledge her. She waited for a moment with a clenched jaw, before nodding and standing up. “Sorry for imposing on your friendship, Stiles.”

Ashton stormed out of the hospital and started towards her house on foot, walking along the edge of the woods. She had her headphones in as she went, listening to the most recent Linkin Park album, when she looked ahead and noticed two figures coming out of the Preserve and getting into a very familiar black Camaro.

“Derek,” Ashton said to herself as she realized it was him. In response to his name, he turned to face her. Ashton looked away quickly, remembering that he was a werewolf and could definitely hear her.

Within seconds, the Camaro pulled up beside her and the passenger window rolled down to reveal Brynlee Finstock.

“Hey, Ashton,” She greeted her.

“You wanna ride? You probably shouldn’t be by the woods at night...and it’s starting to get dark,” Derek offered.

“Well, if  _ you’re  _ out of the woods, I think I’m probably fine.”

“He’s not the one who killed the girl, Ashton,” Brynlee told her bluntly.

“Wait, you know about this, too?!” Ashton shot her a surprised but subtly dirty look that said they’d be talking about this later. “I didn’t know you guys even knew each other,” she huffed.

“My family was very close with the Hales before the fire,” Brynlee divulged gently. “Let him drive you home--I promise he isn’t the bad guy.”

“How could you possibly know that? He hasn’t been around in six years--that’s a long time for someone to change from the person you knew.”

“Scott thinks he knows everything--but he doesn’t,” Derek said. “I didn’t kill that girl--she was my sister. I came back to find out who did. It’s possible the same person who killed her bit Scott...which means they’re running around biting teenagers and not bothering to stick around to train them--which is a huge liability for my kind.”

“Scott said  _ you  _ bit him,” Ashton accused. She glanced at Brynlee, who was picking at her chipped nail polish and appearing completely unphased by the conversation.

“Again, Scott thinks he knows everything.” Derek rolled his eyes. “I couldn’t have turned Scott, because I’m not an Alpha. Have you and your obsessive brother read about that yet?”

“Some,” Ashton confirmed. The truth was, she had read  _ a lot  _ about Alphas, Betas, and Omegas, but she didn’t want to confirm his ‘obsessive’ comment. “Who is the Alpha then?”

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out--are you even listening?” Derek asked with an annoyed tone to his voice.

“Laura, the girl who died, was an Alpha...if a werewolf killed her, they would have taken her Alpha spark and become an Alpha themselves. We know Scott was turned after she was killed, so… it’s very likely that whoever killed her, bit Scott in hopes of starting their own pack,” Brynlee explained. “But, like Derek said, they’re obviously not stepping in to train their new beta.”

“Why the hell haven’t you been talking to Scott about all of this? We all thought he was  _ your  _ Beta...what does that mean if he’s some random killer werewolf’s Beta?”

“It’s not good, which is why we need to find them,” Derek said again, fingers strumming on the steering wheel in agitation. “Am I giving you a ride or not?”

“Sure,” Ashton agreed. Brynlee got out of the car and pulled the front seat forward so that Ashton could crawl into the back seat. Brynlee followed her into the back and shut the door.

“What am I, an Uber?” Derek complained.

“If you don’t turn on some good music, I’m giving you a one star rating,” Ashton teased, eyeing him as he turned on the radio to a station playing similar music to what she had been listening to before. “So, Brynlee… are you a werewolf, too? Since you’re just full of surprises tonight.”

“No way,” Brynlee laughed. “I would die before I had to smell like a dog all the time.”

“I don’t smell like a dog--that’s not how it works.”

Within a few minutes, they made it to the Stilinski house and Ashton was grateful that she didn’t have to walk all the way home. 

“Thanks for the ride,” Ashton told Derek as she unbuckled her seat belt and climbed over Brynlee to get to the passenger side of the car. “What am I supposed to say to Scott and Stiles about all this?”

“It doesn’t matter--they won’t believe you. Just keep them out of my way. I can’t track this Alpha with you kids constantly ruining everything.” Derek told her gruffly. 

“Aren’t you only a few years older than us  _ ‘kids’ _ ?” Ashton asked him. He looked over his shoulder at her and cocked an eyebrow challengingly, which prompted Ashton to scramble out of the car before the Camaro sped off down the street.

The driveway was empty, which meant her father must have still been at work and her brother was probably digging up Derek’s property. Once she made her way to her bedroom, she turned on her light and grabbed a book labeled  _ The Ultimate Guide of the Supernatural World: Werewolves, Vampires, and More  _ from the stack on her nightstand, before collapsing into her bed with a sigh.

Upon opening the book, she noticed that several pages were bookmarked by the outer corner being folded. Maybe they were her mother’s favorite pages? She opened the first bookmarked page, which was a passage labeled “The Healing Properties of Vampire Blood”. 

_ Vampire blood is unique within the supernatural world, in that it holds accelerated healing properties. If vampire blood is ingested by any species, it accelerates healing by up to seventy percent, depending on how much is consumed. It works as a main ingredient in most healing spells performed by magi and even some healing potions commonly brewed by druids with witchcraft practice.  _

She flipped through to the other bookmarked pages and noticed that they seemed unrelated. Some were about weaknesses, such as electricity for werewolves and sunlight for vampires, while other pages were just about their individual abilities and history on the species. 

“Ashton, we found the body at Derek’s house!” Scott shouted, bursting into her room with Stiles by his side. Ashton jumped and the book flew through the air, clattering onto the floor beside the bed.

“Well, we found half of a  _ wolf  _ body at first, but then we realized that there was a flower there, which happened to be wolfsbane, and when we picked it up, it was connected to a rope and laid out in some sort of spiral around the grave. I pulled the rope up and the body turned back into a human--which was  _ horrifying _ , by the way,” Stiles explained in a rush.

“She was a  _ werewolf _ ,” Scott continued. “We think that’s why Derek killed her--because she could actually turn  _ into  _ a wolf. I can’t do that, so she was probably some different kind of werewolf.”

“I know,” She said, reaching down to grab the book from the floor. As she picked it up, a polaroid picture fell out, face down. “She was an Alpha, according to Derek and Brynlee.”

“Wh--An  _ Alpha _ ? How do you know that?” Stiles asked, confusedly. “What do you mean  _ Derek  _ said? When did you hang out with Derek?”

“He drove me home from the hospital today. He said the girl’s name was Laura and she was his sister--which makes sense, since he’s also a werewolf. He said he didn’t kill her.”

“You can’t just get rides home from werewolves, Ashton!” Stiles said exasperatedly, throwing his hands up. “Of course he would say it wasn’t him--that’s exactly what a killer would say! You don’t just trust people like that.”   
  
“Like you actually care,” She scoffed. “Anyways, I don’t trust him...but, I trust Brynlee. We’ve gone to school with her forever and she’s never been sketchy or anything. She said the Finstocks and the Hales used to be really close and she knows all about werewolves and stuff, even though she said she isn’t one. If she believes him, then maybe there’s more to the story than we know.”

“Well, the body was found in his yard...that means he had to have  _ something  _ to do with it,” Scott reasoned.

“Is it that far-fetched to think that we don’t know the whole story? We just wandered into this world a few weeks ago,” She argued. “Look, you were bitten. The fact that you turned means that you were bitten by an  _ Alpha _ . Derek says he isn’t one, which would mean that you were turned by someone else. We know that Laura was already dead when you were bitten, so it couldn’t have been her. That means there’s another Alpha running around and we don’t know if they’re going to attack more people or start turning others to try to build a pack. I don’t know if Derek is innocent, but I know that he has been in this world a lot longer than us and if we’re on the side of stopping this Alpha, then we’re on the same side as him. We should be working together or something. You guys trying to incriminate him just because he scares you, isn’t going to help anything.”

“He’s literally the definition of shady,” Stiles reasoned. “How do you not see that?”

“I gotta get home, but I’ll see you tomorrow,” Scott told them. 

“I’ll walk you out,” Ashton said as she threw a dirty look in her brother’s direction. As she left the room, she bent down to grab the polaroid and slipped it into her pocket without looking at it.

“Since when do you walk Scott out?” Stiles questioned her. 

“Since-”

Scott cut in before she could finish her sentence. “It’s fine-- stop being a dick, man. She’s just walking me to the door. It’s what friends do.” He glanced at Stiles knowingly.

As they made their way downstairs, Scott turned to face her. “Listen, Ashton, Stiles told me about what he said back at the hospital. He’s wrong, you know. We  _ are  _ friends; you’re not intruding on my friendship with Stiles. You and I have been friends almost as long and me and Stiles have. Don’t let him get under your skin.”

By the time he finished talking, they were at the door. He began to open it to leave, but Ashton caught his arm.

“Thanks. I know we’re friends; he really did just get under my skin right then and I’m not sure why. We’ve never been as close and you and him and that’s fine, he was just pissed I called him out about Lydia.” She smiled at him. “Thank you, though. Have a good night.”

“You, too, Ash.” With those words, he leaned in for a brief hug, then turned quickly and left. 

After she shut the door, she pulled the photograph out of her pocket. 

The photograph was of four teenagers sitting on the front steps of a wooden house. The door behind them was painted red and there were white columns on either side of the porch. Looking closer at the image, she easily found the bright features of her smiling mother, who was sitting behind another brunette girl on the lower step, who’s eyes she was covering. The girl was also laughing, holding onto Claudia Stilinski’s wrist with one hand and making a peace sign with the other hand. Beside them, Scott’s boss at the animal clinic, Alan Deaton, was sitting on the top step with Bobby Finstock between his legs, lazily leaning backwards against his chest and flipping off the camera with both hands while Alan was smiling affectionately down at him.

Ashton had no idea her mother even  _ knew  _ Dr. Deaton and Coach Finstock, let alone were close enough to take pictures with them and hide them in books. The choice of book was interesting, as well...why would her mother put a normal Polaroid in a supernatural book?

Ashton stood frozen at the door, shocked to find out her mother knew all these people and they never thought to say anything. She had to talk to Stiles, so she turned on her heel and rushed back upstairs, urgency in her long strides.

“Stiles, look--” She was abruptly cut off when she crashed into him coming out of her room.

“I wanted to say I was sorry,” Stiles told her, taking a step back and grabbing her arm to steady her. “I was embarrassed and I lashed out--it was shitty.”

“I know. I was mad for a few minutes, and then I moved on.” 

“I’m only going to say this because I haven’t said it in a really long time, but...I do love you...I guess,” Stiles told her. “And you only annoy the hell out of me about half as much as I act like you do.”

“Wow...brother of the year. You’re gonna make me cry,” Ashton said sarcastically, placing her hand over her heart. “If it wouldn’t make me want to vomit, I would tell you that I love you, too.”

Stiles rolled his eyes. “What ever happened to being nice to people when they’re being nice to you?”

“You’re not  _ people _ , you’re my brother.”

“And you’re an asshole,” Stiles told her, before looking down at the Polaroid in her hand. His eyes grew wide and he plucked it from her fingers to bring it closer to his face. “Is that Coach and Dr. Deaton?”

“Yeah, that’s what I was trying to tell you before you wanted to have your moment. It looks like they were pretty close.”

“No shit...I mean Coach is basically in Deaton’s  _ lap _ . Do you think--?”

“I meant they look close to  _ Mom _ .”

“Right, yeah, they do. Who’s that girl, though?”

“No idea.” Ashton shrugged, taking the picture back from him.

**Author's Note:**

> Do you guys like this at all? What are your thoughts? Comments and kudos are greatly appreciated!


End file.
